Sacred Heart's choir performs during grand tour of Italy

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - WEST BRIGHTON - On Ash Wednesday, the Sacred Heart R.C. Church choir was in the loft of its West Brighton church. They were intoning the penitential hymns that mark the start of Lent, the 40 days that precede Easter, and are traditionally marked by prayer and fasting.

It was quite a shift for some of the choir members who only a week earlier were winding up a tour of Italy, buying masks for Carnevale, touring ancient sites, sampling Italian delicacies, and singing their hearts out in magnificent churches, including St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.

The group of 17, ranging in age from 9 to 70, and friends and family who joined the trip (this reporter among them) left Sacred Heart with music director Pamela Wood on Feb. 21 bound for Venice. There, they spent two days getting acclimated to the six-hour time difference and introduced to walking, rather than riding, about. It was also the first stop for gelato and Italy's distinctive wares, including Venetian glass.

The choir maintained a rigorous routine, balancing touring and choral duties. Rehearsing the music in Latin, Italian and German was one thing. Just as challenging was polishing their "stage presence," adjusting to last minute changes and managing time and fatigue.

"They are a musical liturgical choir, but this was much more like a performance with the heightened attention to details and awareness of surroundings. They put up with a lot of pressure from me, and I was really proud of them," said Ms. Wood.

"We waited six years for this," said Grace Ross who was on the group's first tour to Ireland. Preparations began in 2005.

Working with Music Contact International, the choir qualifies for tours like these through a combination of its track record, recordings, and the resumes of Ms. Wood and organist John Michniewicz who accompany them.

Ms. Wood, an operatic soprano, has been part of the music ministry at Sacred Heart for 17 years. Music director at West Brighton's Sacred Heart Church in the 1990s, Michniewicz is the director of academic music at Sacred Heart University and the music director at the United Congregational Church, both in Bridgeport, Conn.

The two have collaborated for over 20 years and have performed together and separately in Europe and the United States. As part of the Italian tour, they performed a number of recitals, including the work of Barber, Bach and Verdi.

Paul Carey, also a former music director at Sacred Heart, provided recording services and choir member Robert Buzzard, who celebrated his 16th birthday on the trip and came equipped with laptop and external hard drive, provided technical backup for everyone.

The trip can best be described as a working vacation for choir members. In Venice, John and his twin sister Deirdre McCafferty took a gondola ride with their mother Siobhan. The gondolier was so charmed with 9-year-old "Giovanni" that he let him take the oar.

Although the choir did not sing in Venice, a small ensemble accompanied Ms. Wood at a mass in San Marco, an 11th-century Byzantine architectural masterpiece, where everyone got a hint of the acoustical magic of the domed churches they would be singing in.

"You stand in the strongest acoustical space – with the longest time of reverberation. The cacophony of sound tumbling around is like an orchestra" said Ms. Wood.

The group left the quiet of Venice's watery thoroughfares for Florence where the hotel was not far from the Santa Maria del Fiore – the pink, white and green marble cathedral popularly known as the Duomo, for its imposing dome, an engineering feat of its time.

After a morning tour that included viewing Michelangelo's masterpiece, the statue of David, and the cathedral, a few adventurous souls, including teen Matthew Brain, his mother Felicia and grandmother Nancy climbed the Duomo's 463 steps for its panoramic view of the city.

Ms. Wood and Michniewicz performed the first of their recitals in Santa Maria de'Ricci, and the choir sang the next night in another Church of San Marco, a 13th-century structure.

A stop in Assisi on the way to Rome, although windy and cold, was a welcome respite.

In contrast, Rome is a noisy, hectic city, with things ancient, historic and modern all nestling together, some scarred by graffiti.

The night of its arrival, the choir gave a recital in Sacre Coeur Basilica; the following night, the group sang at a mass in Santa Maria degli Angeli, a 16th-century church built at the Baths of Diocletian.

A tour of the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel was on tap the next morning.

Later that night, the group returned to sing at mass in the apse of St. Peter's where a billowing golden cloud filled with angels crowns Bernini's monumental "Chair of St. Peter."

"It didn't hit me until we started singing. It was like a shock. It was magnificent," said Diane Tabbott-Blum.

"I wasn't nervous. I was just so thrilled," said Beverly Tobin, who at 70, was the resilient matriarch of the choristers.

"We were in such enormous spaces, we couldn't hear ourselves. You just had to pull it out of yourself and trust it," said Lori Fitzpatrick. She traveled with her husband Neal; her daughter Eileen, 23, was also singing.

"For an underachiever, it was spectacular. I felt so blessed," said Ms. McCafferty. She was especially thrilled when she realized she was belting out the Latin and Italian without looking at the words.

"It was up there with running a marathon," she said.

"It's a once in a lifetime opportunity to have the experience of creating music in these ancient spaces, " said Ms. Wood.